WITH TWO consecutive losses to ACC rivals, criticism of Virginia's football coach Al Groh has become quite common. While many of the criticisms coming from the anti-Groh bandwagon are just the complaints of disgruntled fans, among them is one very valid point: the criticism of the long contract extension given to Groh before the start of the 2005 season -- specifically, a six-year contract extension with a guaranteed annual salary of $1.7 million.
Groh's yearly salary, now the third highest in the ACC, is enough to raise eyebrows. However, the debate over the money spent by universities on football is largely a matter of the importance one places on the sport. What is even more astonishing, and can be discussed fairly objectively, is the length of the contract extension. When the contact extension was announced, many were surprised at the level of confidence the University was showing in a coach who had never defeated one of the ACC heavyweights. Their reservations appear to have proven correct. Even should this prove to be a brief spell of bad fortune, and should Al Groh eventually turn the Virginia football team into a contender for the national championship, good reasons to criticize his contract will remain.
Athletic Director Craig Littlepage said in an interview that contract extensions are determined on the basis of "performance, not strictly athletic, but also regarding academics, community service and recruiting." Having led the New York Jets to a 9-7 season, Groh certainly fulfilled those requirements when he was first hired in 2000. And with a 30-21 record during his first four seasons, fans entered this season with expectations that the year when the Virginia football team finally took its place among the elite had arrived. The losses of this year have all but ended those dreams and exposed a costly mistake by the University.
Imagine what would happen if the University took a similar approach in dealing with academics. Imagine that a professor in the Physics department has shown the ability to teach 100- and 200-level classes well. However, he has failed at higher levels and not produced any significant research. Now imagine the University promoting him to the chairmanship of the Physics department, given a six-year tenure, and a contract that made him the third highest paid professor in the University.
If you are having trouble imagining this, there is a good reason. The administration would never approve of such an appointment. But it has already demonstrated a recklessness in spending money on athletics in the past.
The comparison that is most instructive is that of former basketball coach Pete Gillen. After he showed flashes of greatness by leading the University team to its first NCAA Tournament in a decade in 2002, Gillen received a 10-year contract extension. After four disappointing seasons, earlier this year the University agreed to pay two million dollars to buy out the final six years of his contract. Like Gillen, Groh has made his team respectable, but not truly great, in his first few seasons. Littlepage said that the experience with Gillen "didn't have any more influence than any other situation we have dealt with." That statement is disappointing, considering the amount of money the University invests in the athletic department.
Why the disparity? Why the willingness to take such a risk on a football coach, but not on a professor? It is the simple fact that athletics excite students and alumni interest much more than academics do. We don't see announcements about a new professor's hiring or last week's calculus test scores on the front page of the newspaper. People aren't going to start caring more about academics than athletics anytime soon, but at the very least the University, as an academic institution, ought to be more careful with how it spends its money on athletics. It has now committed itself to paying millions of dollars to a football coach whose success seems more doubtful by the week.
We shouldn't merely think of this as the University wasting its private money. Most of those dollars spent to buy out the contract of Pete Gillen, and perhaps eventually buying out Al Groh's, ultimately came from the pockets of the students, their parents and alumni. The University, as an academic institution, has a duty to use its resources to best benefit its students. If coach Groh continues to disappoint, the University will have wasted money that could have been spent on increasing financial aid, enhancing facilities or otherwise improving the lives of students. Instead of spending its dollars to improve the pursuit of knowledge, an academic institution appears to be gambling them away in hopes of glory on the playing field.
Stephen Parsley is a Cavalier Daily Viewpoint writer.
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